The Great Interview Experiment

This year I decided to participate in Neil's interview Experiment.  (You can read my interview here.)  

I'm especially lucky because I got to interview one of my favorite people in the world, Laurie of Lauriewrites. If you don't read her, you should.  I met her at Blogher DC when I heard her speak, and got to really hang out with her at Blogher in Chicago, and most recently at a wiifit party.  She is awesome.

But don't just believe me, let her prove it to you.

Why did you start blogging?

One night in the spring of 2005 I was home, halfway through a bottle of wine, depressed over this horrible, life-altering breakup, and I somehow found TypePad. I signed up, started posting, and just kept doing it. I was a writer from a very young age who found myself working in higher education and trade publishing. I was drawn to the Internet early and spent a lot of time messing around online, so when I found a way to combine the two - a need to express myself and an easy way to do it - it just worked out.

More supernaturally speaking, I think it was luck, or grace, or whatever you want to call it when things swing in your favor for absolutely no definable reason, because I don't want to think about what my life would be like if I hadn't found blogging. I was a very sad woman at the time. It sort of woke me up.

Why do you keep blogging?  What does it bring you, other than income?

I can't stop, not really. I've found a place to write and post pictures whenever I want to by just pushing a series of buttons. How amazing is that? It still brings me a lot of satisfaction, even though sometimes I think my blog is weak and serves no greater purpose and only people who really love me read it and oh, woe is me, blahblahblah. I hope that, as writing online evolves, I will along with it. I'm utterly comfortable in this environment and I have no reason to give it up. I've learned never to say never but if there's one thing I'm very doubtful that I'll do it's to write one of those posts threatening to quit my blog. Not my thing.

Blogging gave me a writing practice again and it helped me to find a community. I would not know so many people who make my life better if it weren't for my blog. When it was very new it led me to BlogHer, which has led me to so many other opportunities and personal connections. I have met people I count among my best friends in life through the blog. Again, amazing.

 Finally, without the renewed focus on writing and inspiration I got from blogging and the people I've met through it, I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't have gone back to journalism school, which I'm very glad I did, even though it was really stressful and difficult and a financial challenge. I never would have gone to Vietnam as a student reporter and would never have been in the stadium in Denver when Obama accepted the nomination. So it's really been a gift. I've just had to keep saying yes to things. That's pretty easy for me now.

On your blog, you also demonstrate a love for photography, how did this start?

I've always liked taking pictures and was always interested in photographs in general, obsessed with my family albums and the images people displayed in their homes. I started taking photography classes in 2005 at the college where I worked, again, in the aftermath of that relationship and a need to distract myself, so I thought. What I was doing was getting a life, I think - a creative one, anyway. I took a print class where I shot with a manual SLR and exposed and developed our own photos. When I went into the darkroom for the first time, I put the paper in the developer and when the image started to form on it I said (I really did) "It's like magic." I don't really think that about much of anything, so that was pretty cool. 

Just like I kept writing, I kept shooting. I'd go out for whole days in Baltimore or DC or on the back roads of Maryland to try to get interesting pictures. I'm easily bored and it has never, ever, not for one minute bored me. In fact, photography pretty much guarantees I'll never be bored again, and nor will I have any extra money, ever, because dude, it can be an expensive proposition. 

It's changed the way I (literally) see the world, and beyond that it has changed my life.

You recently embarked on a new fitness and diet regime regimen.  Did anything in particular bring this on?

 I have been overweight since I was 11 years old and have dealt with it off and on since I was 13. I finished journalism school last year weighing more than I'd weighed since college. My knees hurt and I noticed my ankles swelling if I was on my feet for a few hours, and this was unacceptable - and honestly very frightening - to me. I had a very desperate month or so where I just felt like I would always be this way, I would never be able to lose any weight, no matter what. Days later they started a "Biggest Loser" knockoff competition at work, and in spite of my negative thoughts I signed up. I started working out almost every day and paying better attention to my food, although I can't diet strictly because I'll easily go into a starve/binge cycle and it's just not worth it. After 20 years of dealing with this as an adult I know my patterns and the mental games I can play with myself. It's a daily process.

After two solid months of this new routine it turned out that my team won the whole thing over maybe 15 other teams, and I got an individual honorable mention. This was hugely rewarding. Besides, I felt so much better. I looked healthy and felt good - and I have to admit it was nice to look at photos and think that I looked more like myself, or at least how I envision myself to be when I'm in a good place. The exercise and saner food patterns also did great things for my moods and mental and emotional outlook.

I'm struggling right now. My exercise routine is disrupted and I have a back injury that I need to get checked that's really bumming me out. I'm going off-kilter nutritionally too. I've had a slight weight gain so I'm discouraged, but I started off strong this spring so I'm hoping I'll get back on a good track soon. I know I can do it. I just need to reset the dials.

What is your biggest regret?

I regret that I haven't found a committed, loving, healthy long-term relationship and that I don't have a family and by my definition a true home of my own (however that may look, whomever that may be.) I love my family of origin so much and I am really lucky to have a bunch of really good friends so I'm not saying that I'm out there totally on my own, because that's not true. That's just a different aspect of my life.

I also regret any time I've been mean or rude. Sometimes I have a short fuse. It's something I work on daily. 

This was the hardest question to answer but I'm being honest here because I like you just that much, Jodi. ;)

Last year you read in the Blogher community keynote, what was that like?

It was terrifying and exhilarating. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. It's one thing to sit down and pound out a blog post about an emotional topic. It's quite another to read it aloud in front of a room full of a few hundred other bloggers, especially when my post was so heavy and involved something so deeply personal that I generally don't discuss.  I was listening to Deb on the Rocks backstage thinking, "Why? Why didn't I go for the humor?" It was also really nerve-wracking to have it on video, although I refuse to watch it. Like I said, I was my heaviest ever last year and I didn't feel comfortable at all in my body, never mind my mind.

I'll never forget it. It was a huge opportunity to share something had written with a group that means a lot to me, and to share a stage with some of the most talented writers I know. BlogHer has given me so much that I can't talk about it sometimes without sounding like I'm gushing but every word is true, so this really meant a lot to me. I'm really grateful that I had the chance to be a part of it.

You've written quite openly about struggling with depression on your blog, why do you think this is important?

It's part of my story and I think if I'm going to write honestly, I write honestly - as much as I can without hurting other people or truly compromising myself. I think it's impossible to truly understand depression unless you've felt it from the inside out, although people who love depressed people often have a special understanding. It can be a real horror show to deal with it in someone you love, I know.

I think it should be normalized. Why not talk about it? It's really helped me at various times to read about it when other writers tell their stories, especially because it's one of the most isolating experiences a human being can have. It's scary and dark. It happens in many different ways and for many different reasons but any way you look at it it's a rough road that the people who walk it don't ask for. It can hit out of nowhere and it is, truly, so life-altering. I live every day grateful for the absence of it when it's gone, aware that it can come back any time. Like any other chronic condition or state of being, you have to learn to live with it if you want a shot at living well at all.

Writing can also be a therapeutic process for me so in some ways writing down the difficult things helps me work through them, too. It's important to remember where I've been so I can recognize it if it happens again - and it's also useful to see when and where I've improved, when that's been the case. It's a very daily thing.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Wow, specifically I have no idea. I honestly don't. Most of the time I don't see 10 days ahead - maybe 10 hours. ;) I'm always imagining different possibilities, wondering what's behind this door or that. I hope I'm doing things I value. I'd like to see myself having good relationships with people I love, still healthy, still seeing the world, listening to music, eating well. I hope that I have financial security so I can be free to live my best life for myself and other people. I hope I am emotionally stable and content, that some of the existential worries still kicking around in my head have settled down, that I have done the very best I can and made good choices in my 40s to make that happen. I hope I have a strong community of family and friends around me.  I hope I'm doing meaningful work.

I also hope I have at least a partial season ticket plan for the Washington Capitals, hopefully lower than the 400s.

Mostly I just hope that I'm kicking ass at 49. I don't really see the point otherwise.

Comments

[Kellee]

If the point of this was to make me fall in love with yet another wonderful bloggy type internet woman, GOOD JOB! :) Let me go add her to my raeder... ;)